Who withdrew? The public deserves to know

McClellan said Rove told Dobson that “some individuals, when the list was longer, well into the double digits, had said that they preferred not to be considered” because they did not want to deal with “the ordeal of going through the confirmation process.”…

McClellan would give no names of candidates who withdrew but a conservative federal appeals court judge, Priscilla Owen of Texas, was reportedly one of them.

Putting the Miers nomination aside for the moment, if this is true, someone ought to name – or at least leak – the names. To borrow a phrase oft used by Democrats, “The public deserves to know.” Of course, this is a secret the Democrats probably want well hidden. If the Republic is going to be less well served than possible because of the tenor of the confirmation process, the public deserves to know. The public also deserves to be reminded why highly qualified candidates were unwilling to go through a politicized, destructive confirmation process. It ought to be made plain often and loudly that it’s the intemperate, uncivil behavior of the likes of Ted Kennedy, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton that is responsible for removing qualified candidates from the pool.